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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" align="center">=====================================================<br>
<b>L O W L A N D S - L - 15 August 2010 - Volume 06<br>
</b><a href="mailto:lowlands.list@gmail.com" target="_blank"><span style="" lang="FR">lowlands.list@gmail.com</span></a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/" target="_blank"><span style="" lang="FR">http://lowlands-l.net/</span></a><br>
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<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">From: <span class="gd"><span style="color: rgb(91, 16, 148);">Marcus Buck</span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:list@marcusbuck.org">list@marcusbuck.org</a>></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Subject: <span class="gi">LL-L "Resources" 2010.08.15 (02) [EN]</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">From: <span style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);">Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc.</span> <<a href="mailto:roger.thijs@euro-support.be" target="_blank">roger.thijs@euro-support.be</a>>
</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">p. 16-18 Jean-Marie Hombert (director of the CNRS and linked to the
university of Lyon) dates, in an interview, the <strong>origin of modern languages</strong> (with a complex syntax) <strong>70.000 to 55.000 years ago</strong>, based on
the hypothesis that for crossing sees and oceans a spohisticated level of
language is supposed to be necessary. Distances over see over 100 km needed a
developped form of communication for preparing food for more than 3 days etc.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">That's a '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminus_ante_quem" target="_blank">terminus
ante quem</a>' (limit before which) not a real dating, isn't it? I would guess
that language is much older than that although the development most likely was
continuous and any "X years ago was the time language became
sophisticated" is rather arbitrary.<br>
<br>
According to Wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve" target="_blank">Mitochondrial Eve</a> (that's the latest individual female <i>Homo
sapiens</i> that was the ancestor of all living humans according to analysis of
mitochondrial DNA [which is inherited from the mother without any relevant
interference of male DNA]) lived somewhere between 152,000 and 234,000 BP
(before present). So if all recent humans have brains capable to manage modern
language, it's likely that their latest common ancestor had too. I don't see
any reason to doubt that, if they had the mental abilities necessary to speak,
they had language. Babies go from totally empty brains to waterfalls of words
in a few years. If 152,000 BP <i>Homo sapiens</i> had the brain for it, it
shouldn't take him long to develop a systematic language. I mean, it's a
fundamental leap of selectional fitness to be able to coordinate actions.
Theoretically it could even have been the reason that Mitochondrial Eve <i>became
</i>Mitochondrial Eve.<br>
<br>
This is also interesting for proto-linguistics and the search for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Human_language" target="_blank">Proto-Human</a>
language (the most recent common ancestor of all the world's languages). Even
extremely hypothetic proto-languages like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasiatic_languages" target="_blank">Eurasiatic</a>
do not reach back more than 15,000 years. Each step further back manifolds the
insecurity. It's extremely unlikely that we will ever reconstruct the common
ancestor, if we need to go back so far.<br>
<br>
Another string of thought:<br>
If <i>Homo sapiens</i> had the brains 150,000 years ago why did it take him so
long to develop extensive knowledge and why was the development so rapid in the
most recent period? There was no relevant genetic evolution of the brain since
a very long time ago. Well, there are studies that suggest a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence" target="_blank">connection
between brain performance</a> [measured as 'intelligence'] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence" target="_blank">and
race</a>, but even when we omit the methodological problems (educational
penetration, the irrelevance of 'mathematical logic' as measured in IQ tests to
nature-bound people like the Bushmen of Africa who do the worst performance in
IQ tests) and accept a connection between race and intelligence, then the
development of this "IQ-test-performant" groups still dates back to
the times of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_M_%28mtDNA%29" target="_blank">mitochondrial haplogroup M</a> (common ancestor of the
"IQ-performant" Europeans and East Asians) which was 60,000 BP. So if
we are intelligent since at least 60,000 BP and most likely even since 150,000
BP, why didn't we develop any relevant civilization before 10,000 BP? It
clearly was some kind of social evolution that lead to modern civilization.<br>
<br>
Is curiosity a wholly social phenomenon? Why did nobody invent the wheel before
6000 BP? A wheel is less useful without streets or draft animals, but even to a
stone-age man living in the flat steppe a pushcart is useful e.g. to transport
his tent, isn't it? Did they have so few belongings that they could transport
it on their backs and carts were just unnecessary?<br>
<br>
What about agriculture? It clearly played a big role in the development of
civilization, but why didn't it start earlier? Searching for seeds and berries
is laborious. You don't need much intelligence to realize that it could be
useful to plant some fruit-bearing plants in a single place to have less work
gathering them. Okay, not everybody is so inventive, but in 100,000 years
nobody had enough patience to give it a try long enough to harvest and have
success (at which point others will copy and spread the new technology)?<br>
<br>
I can understand the development from the times of agriculture on. As soon as
people cultivate crops they produce food excess. Food excess allows some people
to not produce food and instead produce wares or to work with your mind (e.g.
as a priest, or as a caretaker [e.g. supervising food production]). At this
moment a social hierarchy arises and you get leaders. Leaders accumulate power
and try to increase their power by expanding their rule over more
food-producing people. Other cultures either get subdued by the foreign leaders
or these other cultures adopt the new technologies and evolve a leadership of
its own to fend off the foreign leaders. From this moment on you have an arms
race and inevitably civilization will evolve.<br>
<br>
But I do not understand how intelligent humankind managed to exist 100,000
years without igniting the inevitable arms race of technology...<br>
<br>
It's notable that the arms race of technology, the begin of agriculture and the
end of the ice age coincide. But I do not see the connection. The end of the
ice age is a very important event with far-reaching consequences world-wide,
but agriculture should have been possible even before. The agriculturally
interesting areas were just in different regions. So how did the end of the ice
age trigger the development of agriculture?<br>
<br>
(Is this still on-topic on Lowlands-l? Sorry, if not ;-) )<br>
<br>
Marcus Buck<span style="color: rgb(136, 136, 136);"></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">----------</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">From: Marcus Buck <<a href="mailto:list@marcusbuck.org">list@marcusbuck.org</a>></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Subject: LL-L
"Resources" 2010.08.15 (04) [EN]</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: Theo Homan <</span><a style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" href="mailto:theohoman@yahoo.com" target="_blank"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">theohoman@yahoo.com</span></a><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">> </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="">
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: navy;"><span style="font-family: georgia,serif;">We may consider that water nearly never
was a language-border, but mountain-ridges always were</span>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Water makes traffic easier
while mountains make it harder. That's understandable. But these language
borders are a phenomenon of a time when the times of "no modern language
yet" were eons ago.<br>
<br>
Marcus Buck</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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